Do you know how to think about the future? All our decisions are about the future, whether it’s tomorrow, next year or the next decade, yet our choices are often undermined by desires, expectations and common mental mistakes – making assumptions, worrying about things we can’t control, missing signals because we’re distracted by the noise. But if you can learn how to think, you can learn how to look ahead. Isaac Newton said: ‘If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’ In Thinking the Future, Clem Sunter and Mitch Ilbury teach us the futurist’s art of decision-making by reimagining seminal concepts from some of history’s greatest thinkers. They encourage foxy, flexible mindsets and reject the popular but misleading self-help tenet that you can decide your fate through the relentless pursuit of a single goal. An uncertain world demands a more dynamic approach. The point is not to forecast one outcome but to plot multiple scenarios of what could happen. Using scenario-planning techniques, we can all harness the power to work towards the future we want, avoid the ones we don’t, and prepare ourselves for the possible risks and opportunities no matter what transpires.

Why do people spend so much time thinking about the future, imagining scenarios that may never occur, and making (often unrealistic) predictions ? This volume brings together leading researchers from multiple psychological subdisciplines to explore the central role of future-thinking in human behavior across the lifespan. It presents cutting-edge work on the mechanisms involved in visualizing, predicting, and planning for the future. Implications are explored for such important domains as well-being and mental health, academic and job performance, ethical decision making, and financial behavior. Throughout, chapters highlight effective self-regulation strategies that help people pursue and realize their short- and long-term goals. ÿ

Thinking about the Future distills the expertise of three dozen senior foresight professionals into a set of essential guidelines for carrying out successful strategic foresight. Presented in a highly scannable yet personable style, each guideline includes an explanation and rationale, key steps, a case example, and resources for further study.

In a rich and varied career, George P. Shultz has aided presidents, confronted national and international crises, and argued passionately that the United States has a vital stake in promoting democratic values and institutions. In speeches, articles, congressional testimony, and conversations with world leaders, he has helped shape policy and public opinion on topics ranging from technology and terrorism to drugs and climate change. The result is a body of work that has influenced the decisions of nations and leaders, as well as the lives of ordinary people. In Thinking About the Future, Shultz has collected and revisited key writings, applying his past thinking to America's most pressing contemporary problems. Each chapter includes new commentary from the author, providing context, color, and behind-the-scenes glimpses of how decisions are made in the halls of power. In the more than half a century since Shultz entered public life, the world has changed dramatically. But he remains guided by the belief that "you can learn about the future—or at least relate to it—by studying the past and identifying principles that have continuing application to our lives and our world."

How traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. Over the past two decades, the way we learn has changed dramatically. We have new sources of information and new ways to exchange and to interact with information. But our schools and the way we teach have remained largely the same for years, even centuries. What happens to traditional educational institutions when learning also takes place on a vast range of Internet sites, from Pokemon Web pages to Wikipedia? This report investigates how traditional learning institutions can become as innovative, flexible, robust, and collaborative as the best social networking sites. The authors propose an alternative definition of “institution” as a “mobilizing network”—emphasizing its flexibility, the permeability of its boundaries, its interactive productivity, and its potential as a catalyst for change—and explore the implications for higher education. The Future of Thinking reports on innovative, virtual institutions. It also uses the idea of a virtual institution both as part of its subject matter and as part of its process: the first draft of the book was hosted on a Web site for collaborative feedback and writing. The authors use this experiment in participatory writing as a test case for virtual institutions, learning institutions, and a new form of collaborative authorship. The finished version is still posted and open for comment. This book is the full-length report of the project, which was summarized in an earlier MacArthur volume, The Future of Learning Institutions in a Digital Age.

Perhaps the most important histiographic innovation of the twentieth century was the application of the historical method to wider and more expansive areas of the past. Where historians once defined the study of history strictly in terms of politics and the actions and decisions of Great Men, historians today are just as likely to inquire into a much wider domain of the past, from the lives of families and peasants, to more abstract realms such as the history of mentalities and emotions. Historians have applied their method to a wider variety of subjects; regardless of the topic, historians ask questions, seek evidence, draw inferences from that evidence, create representations, and subject these representations to the scrutiny of other historians. This book severs the historical method from the past altogether by applying that method to a domain outside of the past. The goal of this book is to apply history-as-method to the study of the future, a subject matter domain that most historians have traditionally and vigorously avoided. Historians have traditionally rejected the idea that we can use the study of history to think about the future. The book reexamines this long held belief, and argues that the historical method is an excellent way to think about and represent the future. At the same time, the book asserts that futurists should not view the future as a scientist might--aiming for predictions and certainties--but rather should view the future in the same way that an historian views the past.

The authors document how four forces--exponential technologies, the DIY innovator, the Technophilanthropist, and the Rising Billion--are conspiring to solve our biggest problems. "Abundance" establishes hard targets for change and lays out a strategic roadmap for governments, industry and entrepreneurs, giving us plenty of reason for optimism.